User:JackofOz/My Favourite Quotes and Anti-Quotes

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This is an ever-changing list of my favourite quotes and anti-quotes. The reader's task is to know the difference, and decide which of the following are which.

See also my separate list of Favourite Insults


Firstly, some quotes about quotes:

  • Sir Winston Churchill - It is good for an uneducated man to read books of quotations
  • Samuel Palmer - Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them
  • Hesketh Pearson - Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely
  • Dr Who - What's the good of a good quotation if you can't change it?
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson - I hate quotations.


Now for the others:

There's some evidence that the phase of being 'aggressively Australian' may have now passed, in much the same way that most teenagers eventually grow out of being truculently self-absorbed and start to discover that they are not unique nor necessarily the most interesting people in the world (from the Sir Robert Menzies Lecture, delivered 17 May 2004)
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so
Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe
Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do
If a man begins with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties
I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right
  • Eric Beal:
When you are offered a horizontal placement for your etymological elicitations, feel free to strut your stuff
  • Time like a last oozing, so precious and worthless together
  • To be an artist is to fail as no others dare fail
Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth
That is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble
  • Hadia Bejar:
The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment
Of course they're out of date. Standards are always out of date. That's what makes them standards (from Forty Years On)
  • A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous
  • Happiness is good health and a bad memory
  • At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings
  • Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils
Sir, I have been commissioned by Michael Joseph to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974 (letter in the New Stateman)
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down
  • Debauche, n. One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had the misfortune to overtake it (from The Devil's Dictionary)
  • Cultivate a taste for distasteful truths
What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine
You know, there's something about me that makes a lot of people want to throw up
You make me sick with your heroics! There's a stench of death about you. You carry it in your pack like the plague. Explosives and L-pills - they go well together, don't they? And with you it's just one thing or the other: destroy a bridge or destroy yourself. This is just a game, this war! You and Colonel Nicholson, you're two of a kind, crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman... how to die by the rules - when the only important thing is how to live like a human being.
- from The Bridge on the River Kwai, spoken by the character played by William Holden. (Note: These lines appeared in the movie, and may have been created by the scriptwriters; I've never read the book)
We don't know how to celebrate because we don't know what to celebrate
Sex without sin is like an egg without salt
  • G. B. Burgin:
It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts
  • J. W. Burgon:
Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city - half as old as time!
  • Sir Fred Burrows:
Unlike my predecessors, I have devoted more of my life to shunting and hooting than to hunting and shooting
The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we have to give
  • I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy
  • It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence
  • Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes along
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer
Talking about the arts is an art in itself
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life wou will have been all of these
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's this day-to-day living that wears you out
  • You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it
  • One may understand the cosmos but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star
  • I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite
  • I believe in getting into hot water - it helps keep you clean
  • He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire
  • If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile-driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack!
  • (referring to ending a sentence with a preposition) This is the sort of English up with which I will not put (apocryphal)
  • We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm
  • Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened
The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less
  • The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order
  • Victor Hugo was a madman who though he was Victor Hugo (from Opium)
(on his deathbed, of himself) - What an irreparable loss!
Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out
  • Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have even learnt to walk
  • There is sanctuary in reading, sanctuary in formal society, in the company of old friends, and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another
  • I ask very little. Some fragments of Pamphilides, a Choctaw blood-mank, the prose of Scaliger the Elder, a painting by Fuseli, an occasional visit to the all-in wrestling or to my meretrix, a cook who can produce a passable poulet à la Khmer, a Pong vase. Simple tastes, you will agree, and it is my simple habit to indulge them
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon
We were so poor when I was growing up that, if I hadn't been a boy, I would have had nothing to play with at all
I've never killed a man but I've read many obituaries with great pleasure
There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. The people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination
  • Peter DeVries:
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination, but the combination is locked up in the safe
The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind
I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law
The internet is a great way to get on the Net
  • Stephanie Dowrick:
  • It is the ability to question what seems self-evident that opens the door to new ideas
  • We can't work effectively for peace while the "final solution" of war remains an option
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done
Once - many years ago - I thought I had made a wrong decision. Of course, it turned out that I had been right all along. But I was wrong to have thought that I was wrong
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives
  • Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work
  • There ain't no rules here! We're trying to accomplish something
  • Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly
  • Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one
  • There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle
  • Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction
  • Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact
  • I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers
  • An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better
  • What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us
  • Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today
Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas
I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible (Harry in When Harry Met Sally)
Someone has somewhere commented on the fact that millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon
Only connect! ... Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height
What is the use of lying when truth, well distributed, serves the same purpose?
It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment
The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office
A man is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave
Formula for success - rise early, work hard, strike oil
  • Of that there is no manner of doubt; no probable, possible shadow of doubt; no possible doubt whatever (from The Gondoliers)
  • Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative (from The Mikado)
  • You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind, The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind (from Patience)
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
Every man is naturally a Narcissus, and each passion in us no other than self-love sweetened by milder epithets
  • When ideas fail, words come in very handy
  • Nothing is more terrible than ignorance with spurs on
Let the scintillations of your wit be like the coruscations of summer lightning, lambent but innocuous
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open
Australia is a very big place. This is largely because of the distances involved
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in
Kind words, kind looks, kind acts and warm handshakes, these are the means of grace when men in trouble are fighting their unseen battles
  • Clive Hamer:
Language must be the only area where changes are generated by people who don't know the rules in the first place, chiefly some uninformed journalists
Jesus went deeper than I, but I have had a wider range of experience
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the Year, "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown". And he replied, "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way
Always listen to experts. They'll tell what can't be done, and why. Then do it
I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true
People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any act of parliament
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult
Dear Madam: I am honorable to accept your impossible request. Unhappy it is, I here have not bedroom with bath. A bathroom with bed I have. I can, though, give you a washing, with pleasure, in a most clean spring with no one to see. I insist that you will like this... I am amazing diverted by your entreaty for a room. I can offer you a commodious chamber with balcony imminent to the romantic gorge, and I hope that you want to drop in. A vivacious stream washes my doorsteps, so do not concern yourself that I am not too good in bath, I am superb in bed. Sorrowfully I cannot abide your auto... Having freshly taken over the propriety of this notorious house, I am wishful that you remove to me your esteemed costume. Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations. There is a French widow [sic] in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects. I give personal look to the interior wants of each guests. Here, you shall be well fed-up and agreeably drunk. Our charges for weekly visitors are scarcely creditable. We have ample garage accomodations for your char... In the close village you can buy jolly memorials for when you pass away... I am sending you my prices: If I am dear to you and your mistress she might perhaps be reduced... we are also noted for having children... Peculiar arrangements for gross parties, our motto is "ever serve you right!"
There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists
  • Mystic: a person who is puzzled before the obvious, but understands the non-existent
  • I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate
Everything bows to success, even grammar
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music
  • I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything
  • Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors
My book is poetry, and if it is not, then it shall be. The Norwegian conception of poetry shall be made to fit my book (of Peer Gynt)
Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking
It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life
Yes, I do think there is a real dilemma here, in that while it has been government policy to regard policy as the responsibility of Ministers, and administration as the responsibility of officials, questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the administration of policy and the policy of administration, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts or overlaps with responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy (Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes, Minister)
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do (from Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow)
See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little
  • A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see
  • Network: Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections
  • Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't
On stage I make love to 25,000 people and then I go home alone
  • The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed
  • Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble
  • Talking is often a torment to me. I need days of silence to recover from the futility of words
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt
Youth is a gift of nature, but age is a work of art
  • James Kearney:
You're always at where you're meant to be when you get there
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much
True guilt is the guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door
We wouldn't worry so much about what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did
A man hates to be moved to folly by a noise
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer
Success didn't spoil me; I've always been insufferable
As a reader, I insist on being beguiled early or not at all, which is why many of the books on my shelves remain mysteriously unread after page 20. But once I submit to the author's thrall, he can do me no wrong (from the introduction to The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, 2004)
They made peace between us; we embraced, and we have been mortal enemies ever since
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so
Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character
Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest
The scientist is not the person who gives the right answers, he's the one who asks the right questions
I think there is a profound level of ordinariness in everybody. And it is something to be celebrated
  • It is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers
  • Literature is mostyl about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around
  • Peter McArthur:
A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people
My greatest strength is that I have no weaknesses
Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremeely difficult to behave like gentlemen
Forever posed between a cliche and an indiscretion (on the lot of a Foreign Secretary)
  • Geoffrey Madan:
  • The cat which isn't let out of the bag often becomes a skeleton in the cupboard
  • The dust of expolded beliefs may make a fine sunset
  • Maharishi Fattibastard:
Some days we are the flies; some days we are the windscreen
  • Lord Mancroft:
Cricket - a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity
Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be. Become one yourself!"
  • The art of newspaper editing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram
  • Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it
Never mind, dear, laugh it off, laugh it off; it's all part of life's rich pageant (from The Games Mistress)
  • Boris Marshalov:
Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, then everybody disagrees
  • I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it
  • I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception
A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting
The sorrow that has no vent in tears makes other organs weep
  • Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-wracking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job
  • You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong
It is not enough that I should succeed - others should fail
I'm a better speller than my orthography would indicate
Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love
He plunged his proud manhood into her rich generosity
You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how (Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind)
That must be wonderful; I don't understand it at all
I think a man can have two, maybe three affairs while he is married. But three is the absolute maximum. After that, you're cheating
Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful
I can't wait until tomorrow, 'cause I get better looking every day
  • It is better to read trash with enjoyment than masterpieces with yawing groans
  • Ponderous and uncertain is that relation between pressure and resistance which constitutes the balance of power. The arch of peace is morticed by no iron tendons ... One night a handful of dust will patter from the vaulting: the bats will squeak and wheel in sudden panic: nor can the fragile fingers of man then stay the rush and rumble of destruction
I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father
When I want a peerage, I shall buy it like an honest man
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
All the world's a stage, and most of us are desparately unrehearsed
  • Heneane Ogilvie:
The really idle man gets nowhere. The perpetually busy man does not get much further
I love a hand that meets my own with a grasp that causes some sensation
The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true
And I'll stay off Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds
The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take
It's very difficult to remain calm when you're listening to someone talking complete bollocks
Life is difficult (the opening sentence of The Road Less Travelled)
People compose for many reasons: to become immortal; because the pianoforte happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; for no reason whatsoever
This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him
It takes a long time to become young
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light
Growing old is like being increasingly penalised for a crime you haven't committed
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to
  • I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from 'em by calling 'em the masses, and then you accuse 'em of not having any faces
  • Pubic hair is no substitute for wit
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it
I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity
In examinations, those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot tell
You, sir, are an Englishman, and have therefore won first prize in the Lottery of Life
Up with your damned nonsense will I put twice, or perhaps once, but sometimes always, by God, never
  • If stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?
  • I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat
Far better it is to dare mighty things - even though checked by failure - than to take rank with those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight which knows neither victory nor defeat
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers
  • When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one
  • Before marriage, a man will like awake thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it
  • One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny
  • Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness
  • The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction
  • A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation
  • Hating anything in the way of ill-natured gossip ourselves, we are always grateful to those who do it for us and do it well
  • We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart
  • Good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school
Mozart's sonatas: too easy for children, and too difficult for artists
The worst mistake you can make is to think of history as the property of historians
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into a flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light
People do not care how nobly they live, only how long, despite the fact that it is within everyone's reach to live nobly, but within no one's reach to live long
In a dream, you are never eighty
  • Ronnie Shakes:
After 12 years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes: "No hablo ingles"
  • A fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool (As You Like It, Act 5, scene 1)
  • To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5)
  • How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world (The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1)
Some people think football is a matter of life and death ... I can assure them it is much more serious than that
  • I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation
  • You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not? (Back to Methuselah)
  • a slightly different (and arguably better) version has been attributed to John F Kennedy and/or Robert Kennedy: Some men see things as they are, and ask Why. I dream things that never were, and ask Why Not"
  • The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man
Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life
You must come again when you have less time
Shallow brooks murmur most, deep silent slide away
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty ... But I am too busy thinking about myself
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten
A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done
  • I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so
  • My idea of heaven is eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is
We are always the same age inside
  • A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular
  • I always felt I was running for President of the wrong country (his reply when told by Barry Jones how much he, Stevenson, was admired in Australia)
The mad often notice significant things which the sane ignore
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end
Worry is interest paid on trouble that hasn't happened yet
  • Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults
  • Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the 19th century, it was a disease; in the 20th, it's a cure
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it
An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question (sometimes labelled "The First Golden Rule of Mathematics"; it would also be a great motto for the Reference Desk)
  • Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome. The remains of it are still visible through the rifts of time. I was so handsome that human activities ceased as if spellbound when I came into view, and even inanimate things stopped to look - like locomotives and district messenger boys and so on. In San Francisco in the rainy season I was often taken for fair weather
  • As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out
  • Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation
  • I never let my schooling interfere with my education
  • It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech
  • Sacred cows make the best hamburger
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly
Many a man has a bonfire in his heart and nobody comes to warm himself at it. The passers-by notice only a little smoke coming from the chimney and go away
We cannot get to a star while we are alive, any more than we take the train when we are dead. So, to me, it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means
The trouble with growing older is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure who didn't amount to much when he was your age
If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again
I am, at heart, a tiresome nag complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise
Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?
I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could
New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises "Why then are you not taking part in them?"
For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible (about alleged miracles)
The point is nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth
If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible
My homosexuality gives me all the insights that make me a great writer
Only the impotent are pure
  • We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
  • Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go
  • He has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends
  • I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train
  • Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them
  • The play was a great success, but the audience was a failure
  • A gentleman never insults anyone unintentionally
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (These words were not, as is often wrongly claimed, spoken by Nelson Mandela at his inauguration as President of South Africa, or at any other time [1])
Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes
  • His huff arrived, and he departed in it
  • I have no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only wish to be entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences
Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title
  • I'm all for keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters
  • Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change
  • The truth is more important than the facts
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence
If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I would tell you I came to live out loud


  • Anonymous or unknown:
  • Someone that you don't even know exists, loves you
  • When the spotlight shines, it illuminates everything
  • Good judgment come from experience, and experience - well, that comes from poor judgment
  • Write something, even if it's just a suicide note (advice for budding writers)
  • People who like this sort of thing will find this is the sort of thing they like
  • To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable. But to be certain is to be ridiculous (Chinese proverb)
  • Life without an occupation is contemptible and meaningless. But you must never allow your occupation to degenerate into work (an Italian father to his son)
  • Some people get lost in thought because it is unfamiliar territory
  • The art of hospitality is to make guests feel at home when you wish they were


  • All my own work (blush):
  • I like to admit my ignorance from time to time. It gives one a certain ... je ne sais quoi
  • I used to have a life insurance policy but I cashed it in when I got past a certain age. I figured, if I was ever going to die, it would have happened by now
  • Less lumen, more lux
Apparently, at least one person liked this:
  • If your primary question is "Am I making a fool of myself?", then the answer is "Yes, but that is an absolutely non-negotiable part of being in love". (source)